Microsoft Corp. said one of the most anticipated features of its next Windows operating system, planned for a separate release next year, had been canceled.

Microsoft had planned to ship the WinFS file system shortly after Windows Vista, which is slated to reach stores in January. In a weblog entry Friday, Quentin Clark, an executive on the project, wrote that WinFS would not ship separately. Some of it will be rolled into a later product.

WinFS was considered by investors to be the crucial feature that would spur upgrades to Vista when Microsoft separated the technologies in 2004 to complete Vista by 2006. The cancellation is the latest change involving Vista, which is running more than two years late and requiring Microsoft to revamp parts of the product and drop some features.

"This was the major feature of Windows Vista," said Joe Wilcox, an analyst at Jupiter Research. "It was part of the operating system and it was an opportunity for developers. Spreading it out into other things that might appear someday is not the same thing."

Microsoft shares rose 4 cents to $22.86.

WinFS was designed to change the way certain types of data, including photos, e-mails and music, were categorized to simplify searches for related files stored in different programs. Some of that categorization is also possible using personal computer search programs from Microsoft and Google Inc., Wilcox said.

Some of the WinFS technology will be rolled into the next version of Microsoft's SQL database server, code-named Katmai, Clark wrote in his posting.

Microsoft really doesn't know what they are doing do they? I mean look how disorganized they must be! TWO YEARS off schedule AND they had to drop some major features.

Apple has no problem rolling out a new OS about every year. It's things like this that really make we wonder why Windows is the majority, and Macs are the minority. People need to stop being such PCheads, and open their eyes because there IS something better out there.

I'm sorry, it just really frustrates me that people put up with crap like this from Microsoft, and still think Macs are crappy.

Of course by that time, Apple will have obtained a whopping 85%+ market share and M$ will be on the verge of bankruptcy.

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On the verge, but not bankrupt. Microsoft and Apple will sign a 5 year agreement. Here are the details that I have learned from a dear friend with a flux capacitor:

-Apple will purchase $150 million worth of non-voting shares of Microsoft stock
-Safari will be the default browser in Windows
-Apple will produce the iWork suite for Windows for at least 5 years
-Both companies will sign a cross-licensing agreement, with the bulk of it detailing how Apple will allow Microsoft to replace it's antiquated "Blue Screen of Death" with any new Mac OS kernel panic messages as they're developed

On the verge, but not bankrupt. Microsoft and Apple will sign a 5 year agreement. Here are the details that I have learned from a dear friend with a flux capacitor:

-Apple will purchase $150 million worth of non-voting shares of Microsoft stock
-Safari will be the default browser in Windows
-Apple will produce the iWork suite for Windows for at least 5 years
-Both companies will sign a cross-licensing agreement, with the bulk of it detailing how Apple will allow Microsoft to replace it's antiquated "Blue Screen of Death" with any new Mac OS kernel panic messages as they're developed

Well I've converted it to run on food scraps (in case you didn't already know), but in relative terms I can go approximately 5 miles on one banana peel. She seems to like the octane boost provided by old Windows 95 CD's, which 'up' the mileage to 10 miles per banana peel per CD.

Well I've converted it to run on food scraps (in case you didn't already know), but in relative terms I can go approximately 5 miles on one banana peel. She seems to like the octane boost provided by old Windows 95 CD's, which 'up' the mileage to 10 miles per banana peel per CD.

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Awesome, I gotta get me one of those cars.

yg17 said:

So, is WinFS being pushed back to the version of Windows after Vista? Great, we won't be seeing it until the year 2074

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